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I'm very close to officially launching the North Coast Synthesis Web
storefront. I have stock for the first product ready to sell. All that
remains to do is file a few more sales tax registrations, and I expect to
sort that out this coming week. I'm aiming for August 1 as the launch date.
If you're reading this on my Web site you'll note I've replaced the
long-running Chessudoku ad with one for my new store.

I will assume that you've already read part 1, which describes what a
modular synthesizer is; and part 2, which says that you
shouldn't buy one. Your spouse isn't allowed to kill me because I did warn
you, and your cat has already formed an opinion on your intelligence anyway.
In this final installment I'm going to offer some suggestions on how to get
started with modular synthesis. Very much depends on your own reasons,
which are ultimately known only to you, for why you've decided to
do this. I can only offer some insights that may be helpful for what I
think are typical newcomers.

When I started the market research for my business, I put together a
profile of who'd be buying my products. I imagined my customers as the kind
of people I've met in the modular synthesis hobbyist community. These are
people with a fair bit of disposable income (typically because of having
California "tech" jobs and no family except cats), who already have
medium to large modular systems worth $5000 or more. They are already
familiar with the concepts, have been doing modular synthesis for a few
years already, and are looking for something extra to add to their existing
installations.

My mother asked me to explain what I'm up to in one sentence, for inclusion
in the annual Christmas Letter, and I said that I'm making electronic
musical instruments. That's a pretty good summary as far as it goes. But
people often want more detail on what modular synthesizers are all about,
and this is the first of three postings I'm writing so that I can have a
place to which I can direct the curious. In this episode I'll summarize
what modular synthesis is. Next time, I'll explain why you shouldn't get
involved in modular synthesis, and what to do instead. And in part 3,
I'll give some advice on how to get started with modular synthesis, for
those who foolishly ignored part 2.

I may update these postings a bit in the future, if they prove to have any
lasting value. And as a reminder, my company is North Coast Synthesis Ltd.,
and I'll some day soon be selling synthesizer modules from my Web storefront, which is not
open yet. You can register your address on that page if you want me to
send you an email when it opens.

The synthesizer project has reached an important milestone: my business
is now incorporated, under the name North Coast Synthesis Ltd. The Web
site will be at northcoastsynthesis.com, which
currently just redirects to a password-locked Shopify storefront, but will
become public and have some real content in the near future. Watch this
space, that site, or my Twitter account, for further updates as they
happen.

I have posted a
detailed set of notes (PDF file)
describing the theory behind my Black Swan Suite, detailing
the endless chase of Elmer and Daffy across Penrose, pinwheel, and other
nonperiodic tilings of the plane. Fans of
music and computational geometry may find the document interesting. At the
very least, it was fun to typeset.